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Renee Butcher

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Happy Birthday, John Steinbeck!

February 27, 2020 Leave a Comment

I might have left Steinbeck there on the icy linoleum beside an already stone cold Hemingway, had Lennie not died.

Steinbeck Quote

Mural in front of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.

Were he still with among us, John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. would have turned 118 years old today.  The acclaimed author knew by age 14 that he wanted to be a writer, and once inspired never abandoned that calling. Over the course of his career, he wrote twenty-seven books, most notably East of Eden, Of Mice & Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. His body of work earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1962, and the admiration of hopeful young writers for generations to come – myself included.  

I discovered Steinbeck at thirteen, when I became obsessed with reading The Grapes of Wrath (not for some junior high assignment, but) because something about the raw poetry of its opening lines appealed to me –

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently…

I remember rolling the line around on my tongue at least twenty times, just to feel the words.

One day as I was sprawled out on the couch reading the thick volume, my father made a passing comment that had lifelong impact on me. “Had a professor in college that wanted me to read that,” he said. “Wouldn’t do it.” 

“Why not?”

“I lived it, sis,” he said. “By the time I was your age, I’d picked cotton and beans and apples and everything there is to pick between the Texas panhandle and the Oregon coast.”

He paused and looked past me. “Told that professor I didn’t need to read about some destitute Okie family doing the same to know what poor feels like.” 

In that moment, I realized that John Steinbeck could open a window to my father’s growing up years; one that had been long nailed shut. I became voracious. There weren’t enough words.

Enter a succession of worn-out high school English teachers, most of whom appreciated neither my literary precocity nor my insightful (read: smartass) remarks. Together we plodded through an endless catalog of required texts, methodically quashing the beauty and vigor out of the Classics like violets beneath an elephant’s heel. Even Steinbeck began to seem dull and listless.

In fact, I might have left Steinbeck there on the icy linoleum of Mr. See’s Freshman English class (beside an already stone cold Hemingway), had Lennie not died.

But Lennie did die, and so there I was one night all alone in my bedroom, fourteen years old, curled up in a corner crying over that sweet dead puppy and that sweet dead man-child and poor, lonely George, and falling in love with John Steinbeck all over again. Not because I loved the book: it’s not my favorite; or even for what Steinbeck could teach me about my father’s early life. No, I fell in love with Steinbeck because he made me see myself.

That night, John Steinbeck became my first writing mentor. His lessons still ring, every time I sit down to write. And every time I don’t. Steinbeck taught me that writing is real work, and talent and hope alone won’t pay the bills. He showed me how to be quiet and still, and let characters tell their own stories. He captured my wild heart with his restless words.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.

~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Inevitably, others literary crushes followed – Jack London, Langston Hughes, the Celtic poets, Poe, Dumas, Emerson and Thoreau – but Steinbeck was my first, and I will always love him for that.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

Filed Under: Shower Thoughts, Words Tagged With: classics, literature, reading, Writing

This Little Light: A Tribute to Dr Maya Angelou

May 28, 2018 Leave a Comment

In June 2010, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Maya Angelou speak in Portland, and immediately went home and wrote about my experience.  Dr. Angelou passed away today, and so I offer my thoughts here in tribute to this great woman whose words touch so many minds and changed so many lives.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the Butterfly Effect – how even the smallest of actions have the potential to have infinite impact around the world, and in ways we cannot fully imagine.

Monarch butterfly sitting on a fern frond. (Source: Wiki Commons)

I had the opportunity to consider this idea more fully when I was privileged to hear Dr. Maya Angelou speak in Portland. The truth is, I could listen to that woman read a cereal box and be enthralled, with her rich, full voice and commanding presence. But I when I attend any event, I go in hopes of taking something away that will make me think, or make me want to be a better person, or feed my soul.

With Dr Angelou, I received all three. She spoke for about an hour and a half, sharing poetry, wisdom, and laughter – even health advice – and central to all her thoughts was the theme of sharing one’s light.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Dr. Angelou told us about how she came to be raised in the only “black-owned” store in the small Arkansas town of Stamps – by her grandmother, who she described with a smile as being “an old woman of at least fifty” and her crippled Uncle Willie, a man who taught her to “love learning.”

Uncle Willie taught me my multiplication tables. He stood me right up close in front of a pot-bellied stove – with a fire inside it! – and said, “Do your sixes, Sistuh. Do your nine’s, Sistuh.” Fearful that he might open it up and throw me in if I didn’t say them fast enough, I learned my multiplication tables exquisitely.

It was with the image of her Uncle Willie that Dr. Angelou framed our evening. Willie, she explained, was a man “so embarrassed by being crippled” that he would not leave his small town home to venture even five miles to the county seat. And yet, as she learned later in life, his dedication to education and helping others created a chain-reaction that still has far-reaching impact.

It was this dedication that led him to take in another poor child – Charlie Bussey – and give him a job in his store, and teach him to “love learning” and “his multiplication tables.” Many years later, Dr. Angelou met Charles Bussey – then the first African-American mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. He told her, “I am the man I am today because of your Uncle Willie.”

She went on to explain how Mayor Bussey then paid it forward, shining his light for a young white boy who would someday become a member of the Arkansas state legislature. That boy, in turn, lit the way for a future Arkansas congressional representative.

It is an astonishing footnote to this story that fate allowed Dr. Angelou’s to meet in person each of the primary links in the chain of impact that her Uncle Willie forged, so that she might be able to fully appreciate his broad reach.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

I am sure that at the end of the evening, everyone in the audience that night left with the same thought: How am I affecting my world? Am I shining my light?

Ultimately we can never know the real depth and breadth of our impact, because it is woven inextricably into the future – to generations and places we cannot even imagine. “Uncle Willie was poor, black, crippled, and living back in the lynching times,” Dr. Angelou reminded us, and still his light had awe-inspiring impact. Concluding, she admonished us that we all have a light, and we all have not only an opportunity – but a responsibility – to let it shine.

My Uncle Willie stuttered, had one leg that was shorter than the other and he was a rainbow in my cloud. I am a rainbow in somebody’s cloud. Each of you has that possibility.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Maya Angelou

Originally published on The Good Hearted Woman, May 28, 2014

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: Writers, Writing

What Book Changed You?

March 11, 2018 1 Comment

Some books are like first dates – you flip through the pages and decide whether to toss them or give them a quick read, but either way, when all is said and done, they are easily forgotten. Others you read over and over again until the feeling of their pages on your fingertips becomes as familiar as an old lover. And if you are very lucky, you will find one or two that change you forever.

Tree & Sunshine

I am a writer today because Francie Nolan made me believe it was possible.

I read A Tree Grow in Brooklyn for the first time when I was eleven, the same age as Francie when her story begins. From that first telling scene as she sits on her fire escape watching the girl across the street prepare for her evening out, I found myself looking at the world through Francie’s eyes. I shared her thoughts. I knew her as well… perhaps even better… than I knew myself, so that in that ethereal space where adolescent memories and imagination collide, we came of age together – Francie and I.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | The Good Hearted WomanFrom outward appearances, it would seem that Francie and I had little in common. She was the impoverished daughter of a drunken Irish singer and a steely washerwoman in Williamsburg, Brooklyn more than a century past, while I was raised three generations and a continent’s width away; the daughter of a teetotaling elementary school teacher and a registered nurse.

But below the surface, Francie and I shared enough: Our love of words and books. Our tenacity and perseverance. Our loneliness, our sleepless nights, our restless thoughts. Our indulgent fathers whom we adored more than anyone. Our equally difficult, strained relationships with our mothers, both of whom had a son they loved if not more, at least better, than us.

In the decades since that first reading, I’ve read Betty Smith’s poignant, semi-autobiographical tale at least twenty times, each at a different turn in my road, and always it is a message of indomitable hope that rings out above all others for me, from introduction to final line. It is with that hope – encapsulated in my favorite quote – that I close today:

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere – be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

~ Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

What book changed you?

 

Filed Under: Shower Thoughts, Words Tagged With: Writers, Writing

writer. artist. music maker.

In my spare time, I write unfinished novels and songs about cowboys.

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